


don’t give a good goddamn about redemption

by Villainyandgoodcheekbones



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Other, yeah i don't even know
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-30
Updated: 2013-03-30
Packaged: 2017-12-07 00:01:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 920
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/741726
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Villainyandgoodcheekbones/pseuds/Villainyandgoodcheekbones





	don’t give a good goddamn about redemption

**Author's Note:**

  * For [truethingsproved](https://archiveofourown.org/users/truethingsproved/gifts).



She keeps it a secret. People wouldn’t understand. They would ask all the wrong questions; “what about your husband?” they would ask her. “Don’t you love him?”

Of course she does.

She adores him.

Marius is a good man, a kind man, and she loves him more than she could ever say. It’s out of love that she’s doing what she’s doing. Because she loves Marius, and she would never want to hurt him.

But sometimes…

She would never hurt Marius. But Montparnasse doesn’t mind.

It’s snowing the day they meet, and he’s ducked into the chapel to get out of the cold, and she’s waiting while Marius is gently haranguing a series of men in cassocks and collars into providing proper burials for the Barricade’s dead. So Cosette is, for the moment, alone, watching the boy who is in turn watching her through lazy, half-closed eyes while he leans against the far wall, chin up like he’s baring his throat to her. The tip of a scar reaches up from under his cravat. He looks like one of the angels crawled down off the wall, too dark to be a Lucfier, but some captain of his, maybe. He’s so pale. Bloodless, almost. By comparison , his hair is shockingly black. Such long lashes, sweeping over his cheeks as he closes his eyes and smiles.

And just before Marius comes back, he slithers off the wall, the way a silk scarf slips through your fingers, and glides over to take her hand. She lets him.

“Madame,” he says, as Marius appears behind her “You dropped your rosary.” And he presses the beads into her palm, still smiling to himself as he nods and stalks away.

Outside, as they’re going home again, Marius worries, seeing the flecks of red on her gloved hand. He cradles her hand in his, and murmurs “My love, what happened? Are you alright?”

She kisses his cheek. “Nothing” she says “Pricked myself on a hairpin” and Cosette laughs “Really, Marius, I’m perfectly well.”

She washes the rosary in the basin by her bedside and until the scent of copper is finally gone, and carefully pours the newly-pink water away where no one will see.

She sees him sometimes, on street corners or outside her window. Sometimes he’s smoking. Sometimes he smiles.

The clergy, or so Marius tells her, is a singularly uncooperative beast, and he must go back to speak with them. Marius is sweet enough to tell her that she needn’t come if she doesn’t care to, and still naïve enough to believe that she would care to be away from him when given the choice. But they will only speak to Monseiur le Baron Pontmercy, so she waits again in the chapel.

She leaves with a brooch in the shape of a lark, although Marius mistakes it at first for a robin.

People complement her husband’s fine taste. Such a lovely ring, what a dear little pin, such fine gloves.

It’s a little like having a cat, really, leaving one presents.

Then Marius is called away on business, as husbands are, and Cosette goes walking in the park like she used to, reveling in the small scandal of walking alone. He falls in step beside her, and offers his arm. She takes it. Neither says a word.

When they finally do speak, they’ve come full circle, back to the door and Cosette says “If I screamed, the gendarmes would be here at once.”

“You would be dead by then” he purrs

She raises her eyebrows imperiously and murmurs “So would you”

He smiles as they go inside.

Marius is slim. Slim is a good word, slim means like young trees and carriage horses, strong proud things that there aren’t too much of. Fine young men are slim.

Montparnasse (“It’s what they call me” he drawls when she asks) is thin. Thin means like a wolf, or a blade, something hard. His waist is almost narrower than hers, and there are scars striping his skin, like he’s taken a knife and pared way the parts of himself he didn’t want. His breath stutters and he glares if they’re touched. Thin, and whitely naked from the waist up, he starts to strip the gloves from his hands; black, kid-leather and so tight it looks like he’s dipped his hands ink. She stops him.

“Keep them on.”

She loves her husband. She wouldn’t let another man put his hands on her. It wouldn’t be right.

She loves her husband, and they make love.

Montparnasse, she pushes down into the mattress and _rides_ , digging her nails into his arms, his chest, gripping his white shoulders hard enough to bruise. Kid-leather brushes her thigh and Cosette swats the hand away and whispers “ _No.”_

She loves her husband. She wouldn’t let another man put his hands on her. But Montparnasse has a lovely mouth.

A cruel woman might have screamed then, to make the gendarmes come running, or thrown him back to the street. Cosette isn’t cruel. She brushes a dab of blood (his, where she bit down on his lip) from his mouth, and cards her fingers through his hair as he lays there, curled cat-like against her hip.

Montparnasse stretches, showing off. “Does this mean you love me?” he asks, insolent.

She looks down. “No. I don’t.”

“Good.”

It’s a like having a cat, really, leaving one presents, coming back for attention at odd hours when there’s no one else around.

She keeps it a secret. People wouldn’t understand.


End file.
